“Biden got failing grades and polls on his clueless handling of the Swine Flu H1N1,” Trump wrote Thursday morning, trailing several messages posted to the social media platform this week that took aim at Biden’s governmental leadership.
“It was a total disaster, they had no idea what they were doing. Among the worst ever!” Trump continued.
He has denounced Biden and former President Barrack Obama’s response to the H1N1 flu before. In an April tweet calling their management “a disaster,” Trump inflated the U.S. death toll from H1N1 by several thousand.
Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the H1N1 virus, informally referred to as swine flu, killed about 12,469 people in the U.S. between April 2009 and April 2010. Roughly 60.8 million H1N1 cases were diagnosed and 274,304 subsequent hospitalizations were reported nationwide over the course of that year, according to the CDC’s estimates.
Responding to the president’s tweet on Thursday, Vox reporter Aaron Rupar pointed out that the coronavirus has proven more deadly than H1N1 for United States residents in just a few months since the national outbreak began. According to figures updated Thursday morning by Johns Hopkins University’s tracker, the U.S. has confirmed at least 2.16 million cases and 117,717 resulting deaths related to the coronavirus since the end of February, when Washington state health officials confirmed the country’s first known fatality connected to the respiratory syndrome.
Statistics published Thursday by Worldometers show slightly higher numbers, citing 2.2 million positive cases and nearly 120,000 deaths from the virus nationwide.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for additional comments, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Trump has faced consistent backlash from U.S. residents and leaders alike throughout this year’s pandemic, with many criticizing the president for what seems like a lack of consideration for scientific evidence when determining response strategies. In April, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ This Week that Trump “failed” to adequately address the virus’ spread during the earlier part of the outbreak.
In May, former Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority chief Rick Bright suggested he was removed from his position within the Department of Health and Human Services’ leading medical agency after his views on virus funding clashed with those held by Trump.
Earlier, Bright filed a whistleblower complaint that said his transfer to another federal agency came after he refused to promote hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as coronavirus treatment methods, as Trump did repeatedly throughout the outbreak. On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorizations for the anti-malaria drugs, saying they were “unlikely to be effective” in treating coronavirus and could negatively impact patients’ health.
